Abstract
As students and faculty enter the knowledge age, teaching and learning are increasingly occurring in on-line and asynchronous learning communities. These communities include students seeking basic and advanced degrees as well as certification and continuing education. Faculty, and others teaching in these on-line communities often have little experience of being a member in an on-line learning community, and no experience in developing and teaching in one. A recent survey of nurse educators (N=352) in Indiana confirmed a need for professional development in the area of learning technologies. The purpose of this proposal is to develop a continuing professional education offering to assist nursing and other health professions educators learn how to develop and teach/facilitate learning outcomes in an on-line learning community. The course will be offered in an asynchronous learning community on the World Wide Web, using WebCT as the course management software.
Narrative
Need to be addressed and learners to be served.
Increasing numbers of faculty are developing courses for on-line learning communities (OLC) offered on the World Wide Web (WWW). While estimates of the extent of course development in higher education are difficult to obtain, Peterson's Distance Education Guide (1998) shows more than 2,000 degrees offered from 900 institutions (http://www.petersons.com/dlearn/). A review of the IPSE course catalog supports this trend for higher education in Indiana. As these learning communities mature, they become what is being called a "professional community of practice" (Norris and Olsen, 1997) a place where best practices of the profession are developed, learned, and disseminated. These communities reshape the way learners and teachers interact and acquire and use professional skills, knowledge and abilities. Teaching in an on-line learning community of professional practice requires a new set of technical and pedagogical skills skills most faculty do not not currently have. Furthermore, faculty development for teaching in an OLC is sporadic, and usually offered using traditional on-campus face-to-face strategies that emphasize technical skills without the benefit of experiential learning that focuses on the pedagogical principles of the OLC.
This proposal is specifically based on data obtained from a recent needs assessment of nursing faculty (N=352) in Indiana (Riner and Billings, 1997) that indicated that most faculty are not prepared as educators, and few have adequate technology skills to teach in web supported courses. The study also revealed that these faculty preferred obtaining information about teaching from short courses, delivered in distributed education formats. While these findings are discipline specific, it is likely they generalize to the needs of a wider audience of educators in the health professions whose needs could also be met by the proposed course offering.
The proposed course will be designed to address the needs of educators who are planning to, or are currently, teaching in on-line learning communities. The course will be offered through the Indiana University School of Nursing (IUSON) Center for Teaching/Life Long Learning as a continuing education offering targeting workforce development of faculty prepared to teach in distributed education courses. Continuing Education Units will be awarded for nurses, and will be obtained for other participants from appropriate CE-granting agencies.
Rationale for Course and Technologies
This course is designed to meet the needs of the increasing numbers of educators who are teaching in on-line learning communities (Web Courses, Web-Based Instruction). The technology used will be the Internet using a comprehensive course management software (WebCT) that establishes a rich environment for a range of learning activities including chat, discussion, on-line testing, group presentations, expert guest participants, collaboration, access to knowledge tools (for example, libraries, databases, virtual patients), and can incorporate multimedia such as digital video/audio. The course will provide experiential learning that models the activities in professional communities of practice. All course activities will take place within the on-line learning community using authentic learning activities. Examples of the use of a range of technologies (text/video/audio/multimedia/ Internet conferencing, for example) will be embedded in the course. The course will be offered asynchronously during a two-week time frame with specified dates for participation in on-line discussions and chat.
Institution's Capacity and Commitment
There is widespread university, campus, and School of Nursing commitment to and support of distributed education. This proposal is consistent with the Indiana University Information Technology Strategic Plan (http://www.indiana.edu/~ovpit/strategic) and IUPUI Campus initiatives to support distributed learning.
This course will be offered through the Center for Teaching/Lifelong Learning at the School of Nursing. The School's strategic plan, "Becoming a School of Nursing Without Walls", calls for the development of academic and continuing education courses and provides the necessary support services from the School's instructional support team (learning resource coordinator, multimedia developer, database manager, video conferencing coordinator, instructional designer, webmaster, and LAN manager ) as well as campus team members from the IUPUI Library and Center for Teaching and Learning. This team will support the development and deployment of this proposed course. The SON has a four-semester experience of offering web-based courses using the course development team approach described above.
Additionally, participant support services are also well developed. For example, the user's guide for the course managment software has been developed and posted on-line; there is a student database for gathering evaluation data; the campus bookstore has capability for mailing course materials; the library can offer full text on-line resources and electronic resources; and participants can register on-line through the SON CE Department. (See letter of support from the University Dean.)
Instructional Design Plan
The instructional design plan includes planning, peer review, usability testing,implementation and evaluation. The course goals are for the participants to be able to
1)select appropriate course design and teaching strategies for an on-line learning community, 2)use information-age knowledge tools for knowledge development in the professions, 3)experience being a participant in a community of professional practice that models collaborative teaching and learning, and knowledge generation in the discipline.
Learning activities will be developed based on the principles of Good Practice in Education (Chickering and Gamson, 1987) to model active learning, collaboration, contact between students and faculty, feedback, diversity, and interaction with peers. The course management software WebCT has been selected because of the completeness of the tool kit and ease of use.
The course will be structured to be offered during a specified time, during which participants can complete modules independently and asynchronously. Participants will also be available to participate in discussion, chat, on-line exercises, and knowledge development.
Course Evaluation Plan
Frequent evaluation is critical in the on-line community, and evaluation activities will be conducted as well as modeled with the participants. Evaluation of the course content and format will be conducted prior to offering the course (usability testing/peer review), during the course (formative evaluation), and at the end of the course (summative evaluation). A six- month follow-up survey will be used to determine impact of the course on teaching practices of the participants. Strategies for usability testing will include peer review of the draft of the course materials and a test of the on-line functionality by the course development and technical support teams. Formative evaluation of the participants' progress will be conducted by the faculty and participants during the course using (and modeling) Classroom Assessment Techniques (Angelo and Cross, 1993) adapted for the OLC. The summative course evaluation plan will include evaluation of the course by the participants, evaluation of learning outcomes, evaluation of the faculty by the participants, and evaluation of the practices of teaching and learning (Chickering and Gamson, 1987; Chickering and Ehrmann, 1998). The instruments used for course and faculty evaluation are those already developed by the SON and used in current Web-based courses. The Flashlight Current Student Inventory (Ehrmann and Zuniga, 1997) will be used to evaluate the teaching/learning practices of the course. The course review instrument will be developed and adapted from the peer review of teaching program already in place at the School of Nursing. The follow-up questionnaire will be developed prior to the start of the course. All instruments have been, or will be, developed for on-line administration, and results will be aggregated on the already established SON database.
Plans for Peer Review and Interinstitutuional Acceptance
Peer review will be requested for this course, and the findings used to develop and revise the course. A peer reviewer will be employed to provide peer review for content and transferability of the course to other institutions.
The course will be marketed to institutions within IPSE, professional organizations, and to interested participants worldwide. Marketing capabilities exist within the SON and will include posting course information on the SON Web site and using course announcement brochures. Other strategies to gain interinstitutional acceptance include discussion at the Indiana Deans and Directors of Schools of Nursing meetings and presentations at national meetings where potential participants would be recruited. Additionally, several nursing organizations have already expressed an interest in having such a course available.
Project Timeline
January, 1999 Complete course design; develop learning activities; select on- line resources; prepare course guide; conduct technical team meetings.
February-June, 1999 Begin to market course to target audience.
February, 1999 Peer review course draft and revisions.
February-March, 1999 Technical specifications developed; course created in WebCT (course management software); course linked to the SON home page.
March-April, 1999 Technical usability testing by technical team, faculty colleagues, peer reviewer; develop/refine evaluation instruments.
March-June, 1999 Register and enroll students.
June, 1999 Offer course; formative evaluation. Summative evaluation by peer reviewer, participants, technical team, project course development personnel.
December, 1999 Six-month follow-up.
Key Course Development Personnel
Diane M. Billings, RN, EdD, Professor of Nursing, Associate Dean for Teaching,
Learning, and Information Resources. Dr. Billings will develop and teach the course.
Michael Vaughn, MA, Director of Information Technology and Multimedia Developer, will design user interfaces and tutorials.
Dennis Dell, MS, video conferencing Coordinator, will serve as instructional designer and develop streaming video modules.
Appendix A
Summary of Lead Faculty's Experience
Biosketch: Diane Billings, RN, EdD, FAAN will be the lead faculty for this course. Dr. Billings is currently Professor of Nursing and Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning, and Information Resources at Indiana University School of Nursing. Dr. Billings has had more than 20 years experience in teaching, instructional design and product development, and is a national leader in the field of distance learning in nursing. She is the recipient of two major (campus and university) teaching awards and has received a Most Distinguished Independent Study Award from The National University Continuing Education Association for the design of an Independent Study Nursing course. She has taught in an on-line learning community using the software to be used in the proposed course, and has designed and conducted faculty development programs and workshops on the topic of teaching in on-line learning communities. She is an Associate Editor of Computers in Nursing. Her program of research is in the area of teaching in distance education.
Publications (selected):
Billings, D. and Halstead, J., Eds. (1998). Teaching in Nursing: A Guide for Faculty. Philadelphia: W B Saunders Co.
Riner, M. B. and Billings, D. (accepted). Faculty Development for Teaching in a Changing Health Care Environment: A Statewide Needs Assessment. Journal of Nursing Education.
Billings, D.M. (1996). Distance Education in Nursing: Adapting Courses for Distance Education. Computers in Nursing, 14(5), 262-266.
Billings, D., Boland, D., Durham, J., Finke, L., Smith, S., and Manz, B. (1994). Teaching on Television: One School's Experience. Journal of Professional Nursing, 10(5), 307-312.
Billings, D. and Bachmeier, B. (1994). Teaching and Learning At a Distance. A Review of the Nursing Literature. In L.R. Allen (Ed), Review of Research in Nursing Education P. 1-32. New York: National League of Nursing.
Appendix B
References
Angelo, T. and Cross, P. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Chickering, A. W. and Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in
undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin/March 1987, 3-6.
Chickering, A. W. and Ehrmann, S. C. (1998). Implementing the seven principles: technology as lever (http://www.tltgroup.org/ehrmann.htm).
Ehrmann, S. C. and Zuniga, R. E. (1997). The Flashlight Evaluation Handbook. Washington, D, C.: Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Norris, D. M. and Olson, M. A. (1997). Preparing for virtual commerce in higher learning. Cause/Effect, 20(1), 40-44.
Peterson's Distance Education Guide, http://www.petersons.com/dlearn/
Riner, M. E. and Billings, D. M. (in press). Faculty Development for Teaching in a Changing Health Care Environment: A Statewide Needs Assessment. Journal of NursingEducation.
